Drinking Liberally — Seattle

Tonight will be filled with primary election results from Maine, Nevada, North Dakota, South Carolina and Virginia. Perhaps, the local issues in your head tax you to drinking. Whatever your reasons, stop by the Seattle Chapter of Drinking Liberally tonight to ponder politics over a pint.

Can’t make it to Seattle? There are 253 chapters of Living Liberally, including 23 in Washington state, six in Oregon and three in Idaho. Find a chapter near you. Or consider starting your own chapter.

Months ago, during the tax bill debates, I posted that the Trump/GOP tax cuts would produce inflation. I knew what I was talking about. Last month’s 2.8% inflation rate is the highest in 6 years, well above the Fed’s 2% inflation target, and if inflation continues to accelerate it could force the Fed into policy tightening that will trigger a recession.

Nearly every mainstream economist has said this was the wrong stimulus at the wrong time. From my perspective, that’s really irrelevant, because it was — pure and simple — a payoff to the GOP’s rich donors, just as Dubya’s tax cuts were. In the latter case, the rich got back roughly 100 times as much as they had donated to GOP candidates — a 10,000% return on investment.

America’s rich understand they have to pump big bucks into our political system to maintain their special advantages. They also understand that when Republicans are in power they’ll get their money back many times over.

You and I pay for it, so why would anyone worth less than $10 million vote Republican? Even some prominent billionaires find this system so embarrassing they can’t vote for it, even though they directly and bigly benefit from it — Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, Howard Schultz, George Soros, Tom Steyer, Nick Hanauer, and Mohamed El-Erian come to mind.

What you left out is (a) Obama inherited a wrecked economy from his Republican predecessor, wrecked in large part because of stupid and unworkable GOP laissez-faire ideology, and (b) the GOP is causing inflation drastically higher than the average inflation under Obama.

After GOP banking and mortgage lending deregulation wrought its demonic destruction, deflation, not inflation, was the major threat to the staggering economy and both Obama and Bernanke (a Bush appointee) implemented emergency “reflation” policies. These took hold, worked as intended, and prevented another Great Depression.

The Yellen Fed’s target inflation rate was 2%. After three QEs and several years of ZIRP, that target was reached in 2016. Nobody thought it was a good idea to overshoot it, which is now happening with Republican economic illiterates back in charge.

The March rate is roughly a 60% increase above the average inflation rate under Obama, and this can be expected to climb as the GOP tax cuts expand the supply of money in circulation faster than the economy’s output of goods and services. The equivalency you’re looking in the inflation figures vis-a-vis Obama and Trump doesn’t exist.

@5, 6 – Trump just proved he’s as idiotic as we thought. Having invited comparisons of his negotiating skills with Obama’s, you’re now going to see a barrage of commentary pointing out that what he got from Kim is grossly inferior to what Obama extracted from Iran.

Goldy✔ @GoldyHA The AT&T/Time-Warner merger highlights the desperate need to develop a new public narrative on monopoly and antitrust that refocuses on the economic imperative of blocking anticompetitive practices regardless of the alleged short-term impact on consumers. 14s

Sen. Claire McCaskill on Tuesday confirmed that she used a private plane during a three-day RV tour of her state last month, an admission that promises to become a political headache in the Missouri Democrat’s reelection bid.

Unless one thinks there is a fight in the Democratic party between progressives and the corporatists the primaries are of little interest. Nearly all the incumbents from both parties will win. A couple of incumbent’s have too survive a challenge which will make them appear weaker than they are, but a charismatic likeable opponent can make that work to defeat the incumbent in the fall. Since the Democrats have a larger number of candidates there is some interest to see who wins those primaries. Liberals, communist, progressives, corporatist, but in all these states all the candidates who are first past the poll are the parties candidate in the fall. The only other interesting thing is where you get a two candidates from the same party having the resources and willing to go run in the general election. It can happen and this year if it happens it is more likely to be on the Democratic side, brining some of the laundry out onto view. It’s the downside of being a big tent party.

@4 It took Democrats and Republicans to tank the economy. The President has limited power in the economy when you come down to it. Most of the policies you have mentioned had democratic support in Congress and on some even took a Democratic President to pass (glass-Stiegel being one example). The economy would probably be much the same, but the stock market would not be as high, and business would be less happy if Clinton had been elected. While we are due for a slowdown, it has not happened yet, and remains somewhere on the horizon. Things are good and that bodes well for Republican’s this fall. If the economic sky stays this way well Trump could have a second term or it could be Pence. Trump maybe fed up and decide to gracefully depart, if that is possible. And there is that thing known as the Republican primaries and election process that Trump has to go through, and there is no guarantee he would get the nomination. Apparently there is one American politician that had such a guarantee last primary season and some pundits suggest that politician has the same guarantee in 2020. Probably with same end results with Trump or Pence running…or any other Republican. And Democrats might get a little light in a House that might impeach, but the adults in the House should throw cold water on all that, as it would just hand Trump a victory in the Senate.

Let’s start with a concluded one-day summit after which libbies are reduced to claiming that Trump failed because he didn’t return from it bearing two stone tablets and a pocketful of plutonium.

Then there’s the AT&T decision. Goldy’s unhappy, which means it’s good for America, just not his version of it.

We also learned that the Seattle head tax is repealed. Goldy blames Amazon, no doubt, but the truth is the City Council saw an electoral juggernaut in the making to kill it and decided instead that the message was received.

Finally, GE is down on the day. My Notadumbfuck Method of stock selection. This thing sells itself each and every time Roger Dumbfuck Rabbit says something about the market.

“The Deputy Attorney General was making the point — after being threatened with contempt — that as an American citizen charged with the offense of contempt of Congress, he would have the right to defend himself, including requesting production of relevant emails and text messages and calling them as witnesses to demonstrate that their allegations are false,” the official said.

A member of the executive branch will need to request that the GC for a legislative branch chamber conduct an investigation.

Do you not recall how differences of opinion between federal branches of government play out? Let me help you out. The House once held then-AG Eric Holder in civil and criminal contempt and referred the matter to…

You know, when you lie, that isn’t a rational argument. It means nothing in a serious discussion. It has no relevance whatsoever.

It is a lie. You know it is a lie, you know that everyone reading the words know that is a lie, and as such they’re going to just blink and shake their heads when you keep repeating it as though it means something.

This:“Inflation the highest since Obama was president. You left that part out.” Is bullshit, and you damn well know it. You’re lying. If you want to have a rational, serious discussion and have people consider your opinions as relevant to that discussion, stop doing that. Otherwise, you just look like a fucking moron with a big mouth and no brains to back it up. Whats funnier about that, is that practically everyone in the room (except for yourself, of course) understands that you’re just an asshole and a liar and will end up either ignoring you completely, or kicking your greasy, fat little ass around the room for a few minutes before throwing your dumb ass out the door. People are tired of it.

@30 it is beautiful with some respect…but it’s also just dirt roads that are filled with water and breeding mosquitoes. But the humans there also breed within the same family so breading mosquitoes aren’t all that bad.

I know the Governor’s nephew – worked with him until recently when he quit. But the kid is ok.

He’s always been that, since his first day here; and to my knowledge, no one has ever taken him seriously, except possibly himself. I doubt his wife takes him seriously, and I’m sure his horses don’t. He probably has to drive or walk everywhere, because no horse worth a damn would give him a ride. Luckily for him, cars can’t think.

To avoid under-trained town clerks counting the ballots wrong, all the ranked-choice ballots are getting shipped to Augusta, the state capital. The ballots have three days to get there — a.k.a. until Friday. Then everyone has the weekend off, and the counting of the second-place votes and retabulation by round starts in earnest on Monday.

“Let’s start with a concluded one-day summit after which libbies are reduced to claiming that Trump failed because he didn’t return from it bearing two stone tablets and a pocketful of plutonium.”

NK State media is saying 45 is ending sanctions. So if he does….well we got 3 prisoners for utter capitulation. If he doesn’t NK says he welched and well we got 3 prisoners and gave KJU the photos he wanted of NK and US flags of equal size and import and elevated him to “He loves his people.”

“Construction of the new William Beaumont Army Medical Center complex at Fort Bliss has been plagued by hundreds of design errors, design omissions, contract changes and time delays that have put the massive project almost three years behind schedule and added $408 million in additional costs, a new federal audit found.”

What say all the Transportation opponents that are always complaining of cost overruns? Do we stop building hospital for the Vets?

51, NK state media is Kim. Those are official NK govt statements about the agreements they made with the Dumbfuck’s new girlfriend.

Today Kim is also saying that a desperate and pleading President PornFuck agrred to a bi-lateral, phased reduction of nuclear weapons that would allow Kim to keep a limited defensive arsenal for “security” and leave Seoul defenseless.

Roypublicans have completed their ideological trifecta: now well established as financially reckless and irresponsible, deplorably amoral and perverted, they get to add militarilly incompetent and weak and soft on communism. #youbuiltthat

WASHINGTON — Cost overruns of more than $1 billion at the Veterans Affairs hospital under construction in Aurora were the fault of agency officials who ignored repeated warnings about its price and went ahead with plans to build a medical campus that one consultant compared to a shopping mall, according to an investigation made public Wednesday.

The 82-page report, by the internal watchdog at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, identifies several instances in which VA leaders turned a blind eye toward problems with the new facility, which won’t be finished before January 2018.

@51 “NK State media is saying 45 is ending sanctions. So if he does….well we got 3 prisoners for utter capitulation.”

And the next time NK wants something, they’ll simply kidnap 3 more tourists, most likely unwitting fools from some evangelical association who went to NK with Bibles in their luggage, possession of which is a crime there.

I see in this morning’s news that Michael Cohen is losing his legal team, expects to be arrested, and intends to cooperate with Mueller.

Put this between two slices of bun, squirt some ketchup on it, call it a “Nothingburger,” serve it to Dumbfuck, and charge him $15 for it. That will cover 1 hour of minimum-wage labor (2 hours in slave states).

Roger Dumbfuck Rabbit had his urethral and large bowel catheters in a twist @ 2 about increasing inflation.

Well, the Fed’s guidance is about to be announced this morning, interest rates will rise, and it’s such a calamitous thing that the DJIA has fallen 0.01% as I write this. Now, the S&P 500 and NASDAQ are each higher today, but it’s the disaster befalling the Dow that Roger Dumbfuck Rabbit will point to in order to make you afraid.

The nation’s second largest federal employee union has filed an injunction to prevent the implementation of two of President Trump’s recent executive orders aimed at making it easier to fire poor performers and curbing the ability of employee groups to represent federal workers.

The tax preparer’s shares plunged by more than 20 percent in pre-market trading after its sales forecast disappointed. Management expects 2019 revenue of $3.05 billion to $3.1 billion. The average analyst estimate for the period was $3.14 billion.

H&R Block saw U.S. tax returns prepared grow by 2.5 percent in 2018 as compared to a year earlier, but the company’s pricing is contingent upon the complexity of the filing. BTIG analyst Mark Palmer noted that the bleak sales guidance was a sign that a simpler tax code had taken a “bite out of the company’s future prospects.”

Archie Parnell overwhelmingly beat his three primary opponents and will go on to face incumbent Republican Rep. Ralph Norman in the general election for South Carolina’s 5th Congressional District in November.

“Tonight, the people sent a clear message to everyone. You don’t have to be defined by your worst mistake.”

I’m glad to see Dumbfuck come out in favor of eliminating cop unions. He didn’t explicitly refer to them, but it’s clear that’s what he means, and I’m with him on this. Police chiefs should be able to fire bad cops with a flick of their pen. We’ll all be better off when they can.

“As she tells the story, they spent only a few minutes chatting by the window — Clinton pointed to an old jail he wanted to renovate if he became governor — before he began kissing her. She resisted his advances, she said, but soon he pulled her back onto the bed and forcibly had sex with her. She said she did not scream because everything happened so quickly. Her upper lip was bruised and swollen after the encounter because, she said, he had grabbed onto it with his mouth. ‘The last thing he said to me was, ‘You better get some ice for that.’ And he put on his sunglasses and walked out the door,’ she recalled.”

A minute ago you were preaching about morals, so let’s also look at this from that angle:

“David Broaddrick — with whom Broaddrick was having an affair at the time; they both eventually left their spouses to marry each other — also told NBC that Broaddrick’s top lip was black after the alleged incident, and that she told him, ‘that she had been raped by Bill Clinton.'” (Id.)

So, if you believe Broaddrick’s story, then Bill Clinton raped a married woman who was cheating on her husband with a married man who was cheating on his wife. You were saying something about morals? Sure sounds to me like none of these people had any.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not defending Bill Clinton. I didn’t vote for him. He’s the ONLY Democratic presidential candidate since I began voting in the 1968 election that I didn’t vote for, and I didn’t vote for him precisely because of his character issues. Had I been a senator at the time of his impeachment, I would have voted to remove him, because for me character takes priority over political expediency.

Now explain why Trump should be president? I don’t see how you can defend him except by conceding your standards are lower than mine.

The Fed’s policy announcement this morning signaled four rate hikes in 2018, a sure sign that inflation is becoming a problem, but this really shouldn’t be a surprise, because inflation is what you get when you enact tax stimulus in a full-employment economy.

It’s tempting to say Republicans are economic illiterates who don’t know what they’re doing, but that’s letting them off too easy. I’m pretty sure they knew the little tax cuts they gave to the middle class would be cancelled out by the inflation that would result from their fiscal and trade policies. That’s why they gave them to you. They’re like the used car salesman who knocks $500 off the price of the car and then adds six months to your loan by raising the interest rate. They cater to stupid buyers, and Republicans cater to stupid voters.

Walker earlier this year signed the largest economic development deal in state history, with Taiwanese company Foxconn Technology Group planning to invest up to $10 billion on a display screen factory that could employ 13,000 people.

Though some Democrats have criticized the deal, it was a significant victory for Walker, who has never fulfilled a 2010 campaign promise to create 250,000 private-sector jobs.

A third term. A turd term. The low life could pull it off again. The Dems in WI seem weak and beaten down and the electorate seems to prefer inertia to going in another direction.

“The Trump administration is running out of space to house the thousands of unaccompanied minor children currently being held in immigration detention centers around the U.S. Now, according to a new report from McClatchy, tent cities are being considered as one potential solution to the problem.”

Mr. Safety School, Esq. has lapsed into panic mode today. Better criminals will typically endure this process with more equanimity. But Dumbfucks must Dumbfuck. USA-SDNY appears ready to arrest his ass in the next few days. And his lawyers promptly announced that in the next seven seconds, when they get done reviewing the mounds of take-out menus and cartoon doodles of dicks that comprise Mr. Safety School’s “files” for “privilege”, they quit. This is the sequence of events that typically accompanies an imminent plea arrangement in exchange for cooperation. But Mr. Safety School must be worried that he’ll look like a weasel look more like a weasel. So he’s pushing all kinds of bullshit into the lazy media to muddy the waters.

I figure the odds are at least 80/20 he gets arrested this week. 50/50 that it’s part of a plea deal his lawyers have put together to reduce his jail time in exchange for his cooperation.

“There is not one U.S. … county in which someone working a 40-hour week on the federal minimum wage of $7.25 can afford to rent a modest two-bed apartment. Minimum wage workers would need to … hold down three full-time jobs” to afford pay rent on this apartment.

Roger Rabbit Commentary: But that’s okay with Republicans. They’re untroubled by paying someone else so little for their labor they have to sleep in a car or under a bridge. In fact, they’re now planning to slash food stamps for the working poor. But I don’t think Jesus will like this when they have to explain their earthly lives.

The fact that Kim himself disputes the way your President PornAbortion describes his diplonatic “accomplishments” is the clearest indication of his flacid incompetence. You dropped trou for another pimply communist. Kim will be laughing at YOU the next time he orders mass abortions. Congratulations! #owngoal

The ruthless communist murderer you just called a “great leader” spun Orange into gold, I wonder how many forced abortions your money will buy him? Congratulations! I guess some things are more “precious” than the “unborn” after all. #youbuiltthat

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